


An Equal and Opposite Reaction

by Sparcck



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2017-2018 NHL Season, Bodyswap, Idiots in Love, M/M, Pittsburgh Penguins, Still and Forever Working Out My MAF Feelings, Vegas Golden Knights, cup magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 03:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14661947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparcck/pseuds/Sparcck
Summary: He knew stuff like this happened all the time, happened to most of them eventually. Some guys, like Sid, had long stretches of it, a career’s worth of magic crammed into two years worth of anxiety. Other guys, like Phil, got it doled out in almost microscopic doses, there and gone over the course of a maintenance day. Price literally fell apart the summer Subban was traded; Lu had some tentacle shit he had to cram up under his tie-down before every game in Vancouver in 2010.But for Marc, of course, it never came.





	An Equal and Opposite Reaction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zeenell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeenell/gifts).



> Thanks, as always, to k, who helped me work out the plot over the saddest post-loss drinks ever. Cheers, and aloe darkness my old friend. 
> 
> And to the S-Tier Club, which I have just named, you know who you are, for encouraging me as I bulldozed my way through this and all my unending Sid/Flower Feels.

The Cup was lighter than Marc remembered.

Horny had yelled his name and reached between Haggy and Cully to grab his hand. “Flower!” he yelled towards Streit, who was heading back after his turn with it on the ice.

He felt a hand on his back, just above his tie-down, and he turned his head to look at Sid, who was saying something  that Marc couldn’t hear over the roar of the crowd, his blood pumping hard in his ears, the unreality that this was the end.

Sid pressed his mouth to Marc’s ear: “Go.”

He took the Cup, looked up at it and saw himself distorted in the polished tin. He pressed his mouth to the metal, and didn’t wish for anything at all.

#

It took him three tries to get up after taking a knee to the head when they played Detroit, because the world tilted dangerously every time he moved his head. By the time he got up, Kyle was there, a hand on Marc’s arm.

“You okay?”

Marc blinked hard. “Yeah, yeah.”

Kyle gave him the gently skeptical face that they must teach in Head Athletic Trainer School. “I think you should come back to the room.”

His guts slowly turned over, and for a second, Marc thought he would throw up. “I’m okay. Just need a minute.”

Kyle frowned, and Marc thought of how back in Wilkes-Barre he had probably laid the same hand on Matty’s arm, how he would have fussed over Matty’s tricky hip, the one he was constantly hyperextending because he was still a kid, hadn’t grown into all his limbs.

Marchy came to hover over Kyle’s shoulder. “Go, we’ll take care of things here,” he said in French.

“I’m fucking fine,” Marc snapped back, in English, and Marchy hesitated before nodding at him and popping his mouthguard back in.

He wasn’t, in fact, fine: the ice threw the arena lights back into his eyes and his vision turned to starbusts; the roar of the crowd sounded like tearing metal in his head. By the time he had let in four goals and made it back to the locker room, the entire world was made of cotton, stuffed in his ears and his mouth, making it hard to think or talk. His arms were too long, his legs bent weird when he walked, and his left hip flexor turned to taffy.

Belley stepped into his line of sight, and put a steadying hand on Marc’s lower back, saying something in English that Marc couldn’t parse. Marc swayed, leaning into him heavily, giving up the pretense of being able to stand on his own.

“I got you.” Belley switched to French.

“Don’t be so fucking calm,” Marc labored to say, and Belley laughed.

“We still don’t know each other very well, this is actually me furious.”

“Well,” Marc said, distracted by the strange and sudden lack of feeling in his legs, gooseflesh lifting every hair on his head. “Thanks for caring, I guess.”

“Hey.” Belley ducked his head. “Hey, we’re gonna get you to the hospital, okay?”

“Your beard is nice,” Marc slurred, and the floor swung up hard to meet him halfway as he fell.

#

“No, it’s not,” Sid had laughed, adjusting himself in his seat on the bus to the Detroit Airport. The Cup was wedged between him and the seat in front of him, the metal cold from being stuck out of the hatch in the bus’s roof.

“No, it’s not, it’s terrible,” Marc agreed. “But I like it.”

Sid stroked his thumb along the rim of the Cup. “Because it means we won.”

There were other reasons, but that was a big one.

“Oh, yeah?” Sid said with a slow smile, and Marc blinked because he hadn’t realized he’d spoken out loud. “What are the other ones?”

Marc thought of them five years ago, stupid kids on another continent, playing together for the first time; He thought of Sid’s sneer when he missed a shot, his goofy grin and his terrible chirps, his hair when it’s soft and curling out of his cap; He thought of Sid’s arms around him on the bench when they lost, Sid’s arms around him on the ice when they won, his hand in Marc’s hair, his burning cheek against Marc’s.

The bus rolled over a pothole, and Marc pitched to the side, the Cup — and Sid — tilting across his lap. Marc’s heart kicked hard against his ribs, and Sid blinked up at him.

They dissolved into giggles, and a second later Duper’s head appeared above the seat back. “I can’t decide if you guys are too drunk or not drunk enough.” He shoved a six pack of beer already missing two cans over to them. “Either way.”

Sid pulled two off and handed one to Marc. He hesitated, then shook his head and laughed a little, to himself. “To the Cup,” he said.

Marc tapped his can against Sid’s. “To the Cup.”

#

Marc woke up with a faceful of fur.

He sneezed, and the fur wouaffed, a resonant noise that Marc could feel through his whole body. He sat up so fast that he had to blink back stars, and when they cleared, he was staring at what could easily pass for a bear, but was, in fact, a huge, black Newfoundland.

“Beckham?” Marc said, not as hysterically as he felt, and his voice sounded odd, raspy and deep.

He looked at his hands where they rested in his lap: long, wide fingers and broad palms, a bracelet of black beads around his wrist. 

“Babe, you up?”

Marc swung his head around to see Chrissy, Matty’s girlfriend, standing in the doorway. The one to their bedroom, in their apartment in Cranberry.

“Matt?”

Marc put Matty’s hands over Matty’s face, and Matty’s voice said what Marc was thinking: “Fuck.”

#

He knew stuff like this happened all the time, happened to most of them eventually. Some guys, like Sid, had long stretches of it, a career’s worth of magic crammed into two years worth of anxiety. Other guys, like Phil, got it doled out in almost microscopic doses, there and gone over the course of a maintenance day. Price literally fell apart the summer Subban was traded; Lu had some tentacle shit he had to cram up under his tie-down before every game in Vancouver in 2010.

But for Marc, it never came. So last year when he lifted the Cup over his head as best he could with shaking arms, he closed his eyes, took a chance, and wished, wished harder than he ever had for anything. You didn’t need magic of your own for a Cup wish, they were so rare as to be almost a fable, but if anyone deserved it, it should be him.

On the plane home, Sid flipped up the armrest and let himself sag into Marc’s side, overheated and drunk and beaming, and Marc didn’t know how the wishes worked, but trusted that he’d know it when he saw it. He put his hand on Sid’s knee, and Sid sighed, “Flower.”

Marc tipped his head towards Sid.

“I never want to win without you.”

Marc laughed, a little wetly. “I think it might be too late for that, my friend.”

Sid put his hand over Marc’s. “Shut up.” Then, the thing Marc had been waiting too long for. “Stay. We’ll figure it out.”

Marc stared at their hands on Sid’s huge knee, smooth where the hair had been rubbed away by years of pads and leggings and tape. “Okay, Sid.”

And he did stay, when Jim asked him, holding up his end of the bargain they had struck in camp in September. But it wasn’t magic; Cup wishes were for the ones who had actually won them.

It was just Marc’s stupid broken heart.

#

They agreed not to tell anyone else for now, or else Marc wouldn’t be able to play in Matt’s body — the last CBA outlined new rules about playing under the influence, especially in situations that could only resolve themselves. But Matty was afraid that his body wouldn’t do well with the break, and Marc knew his mind wouldn’t so they decided to see how it would go.

“This is a terrible idea,” Chrissy had said, putting her hand to his cheek and staring at him for a long moment before he got out of the car at PPG. Matty had called her five seconds after Marc woke up, and she dealt with it by making him a truly insane volume of egg-white-and-turkey-bacon-scramble.

She wasn’t wrong.

After avoiding Sid in the weight room because he wasn’t quite ready for that, yet, he made it through optional skate, where he definitely needed to work stuff out about the way this body worked —He felt ten years younger, because he was, and he realized he couldn’t feel pain in his back for the first time in five years, There was an ingrained stillness in his muscle memory that made Marc feel calmer, more centered. Matty’s reflexes were incredibly but this body didn’t have Marc’s flexibility, and he ended up under-positioning and over-reaching, pucks just clipping his blocker or the tips of his glove as they went in.

Kris looped around his net — Matty’s net — and winked at him as he slashed gently at Matty’s pads with his stick. “You need some salts, Murr?” He was looking at Matty he way he would look at Marc, but also different; this was a Kris Marc didn’t know, making jokes that were theirs, and across the ice was Geno and Phil who he hadn't even talked to yet, and in the locker room, his stall with someone else’s name on it.

Everything moved on, of course it did, without him there.

He sat in Matty’s stall afterwards, suddenly panicking at the thought of having to stay here. The thing he wanted didn’t exist anymore, the people he wanted it with he suddenly saw as strangers.

Sid came in in his base layers, sweaty from his pre-game bike. His shoulders were massive, bigger than Marc remembered. He was tan, his hair greying at his temples — did that happen this summer? Surely Marc had seen those before?

He clapped Marc on the shoulder as he passed. “All right, Murr,” he said, giving Marc his trademark captain wink and a tilt of his chin, just as painfully sincere and stupidly self-deprecating as always.

Marc wasn’t sure what he expected to happen. You hear about guys swapping bodies, about guys getting de-aged, or getting their memories rewound. In all those stories, there’s the thunderclap moment, the person who knows them anyway, the moment where everything comes to a head and the magic is snapped, reality put back into place.

But there was no thunderclap. Sid didn’t recognize him; Sid wasn’t waiting for the magic that would bring Marc back to him. Sid knew, maybe, what Marc hadn’t accepted yet: that it was over.

“All right, Sid,” Marc said around the stone caught in Matty’s throat, and bent to unlace his skates.

#

They won. Marc made 43 saves and was handed the Steelers helmet, which he had never seen before, adorned with stickers from games they won that he didn’t play.

He sat in Matty’s stall and laughed until he cried.

#

He told Shears he’d take a cab, and went to sit on the home bench, looking out into the cold, half-dark of the arena.

“How long you back for?”

He whipped his head around, and there was Geno, standing at the end of the bench. “Uh, sorry?”

“Quick visit?” Geno stepped in and sat down, too close, as usual. “I don’t know you switch bodies, never seen you do.”

“I don’t— Geno, who do you think you’re talking to?”

Geno bumped shoulders with him. “Flower, of course I know you.”

Marc goggled at him. “But— How?”

“Eyes are different.” Geno quirked his mouth to the side. “Also you flopping around in net and you let in terrible goal in second period. Very soft.”

Marc gasped out an affronted laugh. “Asshole!”

Geno smiled, his little self-satisfied smirk. “You played, I know you don’t tell anyone. But I wanted to say hi, in case you’re not travel with us to New York.” He tapped the side of Marc’s head. “You okay?”

“I think it’s a concussion. I won’t know until I get back, I guess.”

“And here?” Geno tapped his chest, and Marc had to take a minute before he could answer.

“I’m— I don’t know yet.”

Geno hummed and looked out across the ice. “We miss you here. I think it won’t be so strange, but it is.”

Marc started to speak, then stopped, cleared his throat. “This has never— I didn’t think this would ever happen to me. Magic, I mean.”

Geno looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Magic doesn’t just _happen_. You _are_ magic.”

Marc just stared.

“You and Sid, you think things just happen to you — him, it happens too much, you not enough. But both of you, you make it happen, you have to do something with it.” He put a hand over Marc’s chest. “It’s not magic that you’re here. It’s just you.”

Marc stood up too fast, his heart rabbiting against his ribs. “I should…”

Geno stood up, too. “I’ll drive.”

#

Mario’s private car took them from the airport to Mario’s house, where Sid and Marc sat at the front gate, enclosed by the hush of pre-dawn and the dark window dividing the backseat from the front.

“We did it,” Marc said again, for what felt like the fortieth time between the celebration on the ice in Joe Louis to the bus to the plane.

“I told you.”

“You did.”

Sid bit his lip, then took a breath. “Stay.”

The word sparked through his brain and dripped out through every nerve, tingling in his belly and between his legs and in the soles of his feet. He wanted, so badly. But…

He could see it in his mind, the Cup gleaming between them, everything Marc felt when he looked at Sid projected onto it. 

He needed to be sure.

Marc kissed him, hard, leaving them both out of breath when he broke away. “Ask me again,” he said, “Not now, but ask me again, and I will.”

Sid looked at him for a long moment, his face and throat flushed dark red. Then he opened the car door and got out.

Marc knocked on the divider, and the car pulled away to bring him home.

#

The gate code was new, but it looked like Sid had actually finished the unending landscaping work in his front yard, and everything else looked the same. Marc raised a hand to Geno as the gate closed behind him, and he stood uncertainly  on Sid’s front step, waiting to hear the distinctive pattern of Sid coming down the stairs.

The door opened, and then there Sid was, in sweats and an inside-out white undershirt. “Murr, you okay?”

“No, ah…” Marc took a breath and switched to French. “Sorry. It’s me, Sidney.”

Sid stood silently and just looked at him, and looked and looked. Then he stepped forward and put his arms around Matty’s skinny chest, his face into the crook of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

“Since when?” Sid said, muffled.

“Just today. The concussion, it’s—“ He put his arms around Sid’s back, the thick muscles there moving under Marc’s hands as Sid breathed. “It doesn’t matter. I just fucking missed you too much.”

Sid stepped back. “You stopped texting.” 

“I know.” Marc sighed. “I thought this would be easier in another body.”

Sid’s mouth thinned out. “Don’t. I don’t even get to be mad to your face.” He reached up and touched Matty’s cheek, slid his thumb over the scruff on his chin, under Matty’s lip where Marc had shaved for the first time in 15 years.

“I know,” Marc said again.

“Why?”

Marc hesitated, but the truth was right there, finally. “I wanted to go. I was ready, and I wanted it to be over.”

Sid’s face crumpled. “Oh, Flower.”

Marc looked at him, his dear, dumb face, and he bent down to kiss first one cheek, then the other. He hesitated a moment, looking at Sid’s mouth, then stepped back. “I’m sorry I didn’t stay the first time you asked.”

Sid ran a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry I never asked again.”

Marc was never going to ask, but he figured it was all out there now. “Why didn’t you?”

Sid flushed, dull red down into the vee of his shirt. “I...I tried to wish for you.” He hiccuped a laugh. “It sounds so stupid now, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Marc’s belly’s stooped to his toes, and when it came back up, it brought with it that rush of weightlessness. “It was,” Marc said and put his forehead against Sid’s, closing his eyes. “It was a good idea.”

“So ask me,” Sid said, putting his face against Marc’s. 

“Sid--” Marc struggled to hold on, a roaring in his ears. 

Sid put his hands on Marc’s face and looked into his eyes. “Ask me this time, and I’ll say yes.”

Marc closed his eyes.

#

“Did you ever think we’d be here?” Sid asked him once, their first away game together in Buffalo.

Mark looked at him and felt a pleasant pain dart through his chest. “Honestly? Yeah.”

#

When he opened them again, he was staring at the open duct work of the ceiling in the Conditioning room.

Miller’s face popped into his line of sight. “Muzz?”

Marc sat up slowly, put his hands on his face where Sid’s hands had been. “No,” he said and smiled stupidly. “It’s just me.”  
  


  


#

 


End file.
